Happy New Year from team Alarum! We’re currently looking ahead to touring plans for 2018 (more information shortly – or keep up to date with progress by browsing the rest of our shiny new website), and we’ve also been reflecting on the past year. It’s been an adventure and as

BBC Countryfile have been interested in featuring the work of ‘The Idle Women’ for some time now. They contacted Canal & River Trust a while back and the Trust put the researcher in touch with us. The first discussions came to nothing, but when they contacted us again with an

Our Arts Council funding has enabled us to do several things we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford to do, like, for example, run activities for local communities as we passed through. One of those activities was a Creative Writing Workshop at Stoke Bruerne Museum on Wednesday 19th July

Over the last 14 weeks we’ve experienced a lot of what the original trainees would have gone through; stemming up, breasting up, learning to splice ropes, steering round sharp bends … and lots of modern day trainees have joined us throughout the journey too. There are still a few opportunities

As we recently went to the historic boat rally in Braunston with Tench we thought it would be a good time to tell you a bit more about the 80 yr old boat and her owner, Alex Bennett. She began life in 1936 in Cheshire. Built by W.J. Yarwood and Sons

The journey continues. This last week we’ve done several shows in Milton Keynes: at Lionhearts we met the owner of Ash, the partner of Willow, in one of Heather’s songs and in the tiny village of Woolstone we estimated that nearly everyone who could come to a matinee was there!

So much has happened this week, it’s hard to pack it all into one blog post. On Friday we were at Hillingdon Boat Club. In the audience was IWA member, Andrew Simpson, who heard that we planned to stop the next day in search of a milepost dedicated to Eily

Week 2 began with shows at Cavalcade: tasters in the morning and shows in the evening. On Saturday, Kate performed Isobel’s War under extremely challenging circumstances! A last minute change of venue meant that our sizeable audience carried chairs from one marquee to another while Kate set up to perform.

What a week! Saturday was launch day, after which we travelled from Bull’s Bridge to Limehouse for the opening night (Monday) which was also press night. Three reviews followed, all pleasingly positive. Here’s an extract from one of them, Theatre Things: “… an enjoyable retelling and great entertainment … a

From the family album… I’m a landlubber. Kate is a live-aboard boater. We first encountered each other on Twitter in February 2016 and – fast forward at break-neck speed! – we are about to embark on our third tour of a show we cooked up together, Idle Women of